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In the interest of not over-indexing on Hitler's downfall, what are some other slow but inexorable military defeats that failed to pierce the epistemic closure of leadership until the very end?
I think partially complicating the narrative is that the Russian fantasy of a well-equipped and organised military, of a fractured and compromised Ukraine that would welcome them as liberators and turn against Zelenskyy, and of a weak Western alliance, has already been incontrovertibly destroyed. There are certainly bad ways to react to that which would retain a kind of disconnect -- and the purges of the Siloviki may well result in more fear than more clarity -- but the knowledge that you have already got it very wrong once still remains. What would really be that different about Ukraine liberating Kherson or Lysychansk or Donetsk compared to that first disastrous collision with reality?
I'm not convinced Putin does have a particularly sunny outlook, accordingly, though I'm sure significant issues with carrying bad news accurately and objectively up the C2 chain remain. Instead of one big epistemic collapse, where eschatological hopes pinned on a coup de main get transferred to gradual territory gains, to hopes of European collapse of resolve in the winter (while weaning off looks more and more realistic) until no more transference is possible, an alternative and perhaps more likely view is that however bleak the coming year is for Russia, leaving humiliated with nothing is a far bleaker alternative to Putin. The looming collapse of CSTO as a bloc orbiting Russia shows how dire Russia's credibility is. Hence the current moves to consolidate notional gains -- not militarily, but within his own domestic political sphere. It's unlikely to work, but sometimes there are just no better options.
Many guerilla movements. For example Armia Krajowa in Poland was doomed but they tried (see Warsaw Uprising for example). Or Jewish uprising against Roman Empire.
But here you have also a decent dose of fight being elaborate suicide, still preferable to alternatives.
Baghdad Bob. For some values of slow.
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